


Echoes

by JK Ashavah (ashavah)



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-26
Updated: 2014-10-26
Packaged: 2018-02-22 16:42:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2514728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashavah/pseuds/JK%20Ashavah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the face of the loss of one more thing he once loved, Dylan faces a crisis of faith. But he's never as alone as he thinks. After episode 2.18 <i>The Fair Unknown</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zelly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelly/gifts).



> Disclaimer: It's all owned by Tribune Entertainment and dreamed up by Gene Roddenberry. No disrespect intended, no profit being made, etc. Just taking them out for a spin.
> 
> This was inspired by a prompt from [zelly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/zelly), who asked me to write something about Dylan inspired by a picture of a knight on horseback.

Ral Parthia is gone.

Dylan had known it was gone since the slipstream started collapsing around them as they carried out Uxulta's last order.

_Run_. 

Whatever issues he might have had with the rest of Uxulta's orders, he'd had no problem with that one. They'd barely made it out as it was, as the slipstream route, one he'd always loved, one of the first he'd ever flown, fell apart around them and nearly killed them all. 

He'd known it was gone even before he'd watched on the viewscreen from his quarters as Beka tried every possible sliproute and even some that weren't so possible.

Gone. Just like the Vedrans. Just like the Commonwealth they'd stood for.

Just like Tarn-Vedra. Their home, and his.

He can still remember, shining clear from childhood like some things unaccountably do, leaning across to watch his mother navigating that same sliproute. Remembers her smile as she'd promised that one day, when he was older, she'd teach him to fly it. She'd been good to her word, patiently teaching what she'd known of flying from living it for years to the son who'd so desperately wanted to join the Argosy. 

Ral Parthia had been caught up in those memories. Happier memories from a happier time, when his heart had been full of excitement, delight at the things he'd seen around him instead of the ache of the things he's lost.

Now Ral Parthia, its streams, its rivers, the sounds of birds and the laughter of children, the whispers as people from across the Commonwealth saw Vedrans at rest, away from Tarn-Vedra, is just another part of that weight.

How many things does he have to lose before he can get something back?

Today, for a while, he'd thought he'd finally make it home. Just like he had when Beka had so cockily explained her plan to find the lost sliproute to Tarn-Vedra. If anyone could have taken him there, it's not Beka, not for all she's the best slipstream pilot he's ever seen.

It was Uxulta. And he'd let her take a nova bomb to Ral Parthia and go off to die.

There'd been a time when he'd have believed she was in the right as unquestioningly, as innocently, as Maia. Maia, who'd told him that Vedrans always do what's right. 

As a son of Tarn-Vedra, he wants to believe that. Wants to believe that he just gave a nova bomb to a just cause. That he helped to save something from the Kalderans. Harper hadn't been so sure, but Harper had accepted it when he'd refused to discuss the question. But he's no Admiral Munro, and two years fighting the universe to try to bring some semblance of sanity to a world that's lost all that was best in it have made him reluctant to just blindly do what he's told.

Even by a Vedran.

He's been staring at the viewscreen ever since Maia left and he's not, honestly, sure any more how long that's been. He just doesn't want to face his crew. Doesn't want their questions. Doesn't want their doubts, the ones that will so closely echo his own, the doubts he can't let them see, because a captain can't have this crisis of faith.

He wishes he had some way of knowing, or not even that, of _believing_ , that what he did saved Ral Parthia, that last happy place from his childhood. That it helped the Vedrans, wherever the hell they are.

That he could take Uxulta's words as she'd left his ship as some sort of salve for the ache in his heart.

_We're proud of you, Captain, very proud, and we want very much for you to carry on._

Any day but today, those words would have soothed a longing in his soul hidden deep where it won't show. The longing for something, for some _one_ to stand with him. The longing that Rommie had thrown in his face when she'd calmly told him he was angry and hurt that the Vedrans had returned to the Known Worlds and hadn't given him a _thing_ for his mission to restore their world, their ideals, their Commonwealth.

He'd only been so angry at her words because they were right.

His head drops to his hands and his eyes close.

Today's been too much. There are a lot of days he could say that about, and very few he _does_. But Uxulta had been right about something. He's lost, in a world that isn't his, and to have an emissary of home there, tangible and alive on his ship and then snatched away again leaves him feeling as adrift from this world as from his own.

Everything he does, he does out of belief and, somehow, that belief's no easier to hold onto for Uxulta's assurances that the Vedrans want his mission to continue.

When the door opens, he snaps upright, head lifting, and turns to see Beka.

"Every sliproute to Ral Parthia I've tried is dead."

He lets out a slow breath.

"Yeah. I know."

"You _know_?" she repeats, tilting her head to give him a disbelieving look.

"Let's say …” he says, considering the words before he continues, voice thoughtful, “I’m not surprised."

"So where are we going?" She shrugs, her thumbs hooked into her belt. "Can't fly without a destination."

His gaze goes back to the viewscreen for a moment before he shakes his head and turns, resting one arm on the back of the couch as he shifts to look at her.

"Back to Xinti."

"You're giving up?" she asks, raising her eyebrows. "Dylan Hunt?"

He forces something that almost sounds like a laugh.

"There's nothing to give up on, Beka. Whatever Uxulta did, Ral Parthia's gone."

"Just like Tarn-Vedra?"

"I hope so."

"You _hope_ so?" She sounds incredulous, and after her attempts to find a sliproute that would take them to Tarn-Vedra, he can't blame her. "Why would you _hope_ so? Nobody's seen Tarn-Vedra for over three hundred years."

"She had," he says, looking up at her over his shoulder, "Tarn-Vedra's still out there, somewhere. So maybe Ral Parthia is, too."

"You really think she came back, from wherever Tarn-Vedra's gone?"

"She told me as much." His voice sounds distant as he tells her the rest. "She said Tarn-Vedra knows what we're doing. That they want us to continue."

"Hello?" she says, and her voice is so sharp that this time he's snapped out of his thoughts, out of his distant stare that only sometimes lands on her. "Where's the celebration? I'd have thought hearing from the _Vedrans_ that they like your crusade would have made you happy. Or do I need to call Trance in here to make sure that's really you?"

She steps closer, leaning down, arms crossed and resting on the back of the couch.

Just occasionally, she looks concerned about him. Now's one of those moments, but she doesn’t push. She rarely does, and he appreciates it.

Sometimes, he just doesn’t want to talk to her. Today, though … hell, he may as well tell her. She’s always shown an interest in the hints and remnants left behind by the loss of Tarn-Vedra. Besides, she’s more than just his First Officer; she’s his friend, as well.

And a fellow pilot.

"Ral Parthia was one of the first sliproutes I ever flew."

Beka shifts her weight, shaking her head at him, and reaching out one hand to prod at his shoulder.

"You know, sometimes you can get really sentimental. We got a mission to do here, or what?"

The gentle breath he lets out is amused, and for the first time in too long, he feels himself smile.

"One sanctioned by Tarn-Vedra."

Beka grins.

"Damn straight. Now, we going to Xinti?"

"Yeah," he agrees, standing up and giving the viewscreen one last, wistful, smile. "We're going to Xinti."

They're nearly at the door when he adds, like it's just occurred to him, "And Beka? Thanks."

"You got it."


End file.
